Little Kit's Coty House

The Countless Stones, also known as Little Kit's Coty House, is the name of the remains of a Neolithic chambered long barrow on Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the English county of Kent. The site is one of the Medway megaliths. Their name comes from an old wives' tale that every time you count the stones, the result will be different.

The site today

Closeup of the stones

Now a jumble of half-buried sarsen stones it is thought to have been a tomb similar to that of the Coldrum Stones. The name is derived from the belief that the chaotic pile of stones from the collapsed tomb were uncountable and various stories are told about the fate of those who tried. Another nearby site that may have been Neolithic is at Cossington.

There are between 19 and 21 stones depending on the authority. They were pushed over in the seventeenth century seemingly before any antiquarian interest was taken in them. William Stukeley attempted to reconstruct the damaged tomb in plan in the eighteenth century.

The site as drawn by Stukeley in 1722

Archaeological evaluation trenching in 1989 found no clear evidence of any surrounding quarry ditch which would normally have been excavated to provide material for a covering barrow. Iron Age activity was found close by.

The better preserved Kit's Coty House stands around 450m north.

In 1893, the antiquarian George Payne mentioned the monument in his Collectanea Cantiana, describing it as a "fallen cromlech" and noting that there were various other megaliths scattered in the vicinity, suggesting that these were part of the monument of another like it, since destroyed.^[1]

References

Footnotes

1. Payne 1893, pp. 126–127.

Bibliography

"Coldrum Stones". The National Trust. Retrieved 27 August 2012.

Ashbee, Paul (1998). "Coldrum Revisited and Reviewed". Archaeologia Cantiana (Kent Archaeological Society) 118: 1–44.

Bennett, F.J. (January–June 1913). "Coldrum Monument and Exploration 1910". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 43: 76–85. JSTOR 2843160.

Burl, Aubrey (1981). Rites of the Gods. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0460043137.

Clinch, George (1904). "Coldrum, Kent, and Its Relation to Stonehenge". Man 4: 20–23. JSTOR 2840863.

Filkins, E. (1928). "Excavations at Coldrum, Kent". The Antiquaries Journal 8: 356–357. doi:10.1017/s0003581500092970.

Grinsell, Leslie V. (1976). Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain. London: David & Charles. ISBN 0-7153-7241-6.

Hutton, Ronald (1991). The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford, U.K. and Cambridge, U.S.: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-17288-8.

Keith, A. (January–June 1913). "Report on the Human Remains Found by F. J. Bennett, Esq., F.G.S., in the Central Chamber of a Megalithic Monument at Coldrum, Kent". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 43: 86–100. JSTOR 2843161.

Lewis, A.L. (1878). "On a Rude Stone Monument in Kent". The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 7: 140–142. JSTOR 2841379.

Lewis, A.L. (1904). "The Coldrum Monument". Man (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland) 4: 395. JSTOR 2839987.

Malone, Caroline (2001). Neolithic Britain and Ireland. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus. ISBN 0-7524-1442-9.

Payne, George (1893). Collectanea Cantiana: Or, Archæological Researches in the Neighbourhood of Sittingbourne, and Otherparts of Kent. London: Mitchell and Hughes.

Petrie, W.M. Flinders (1880). "Notes on Kentish Earthworks". Archaeologia Cantiana 13: 8–16.

Philp, Brian; Dutto, Mike (2005). The Medway Megaliths (third ed.). Kent: Kent Archaeological Trust.

Smith, Martin; Brickley, Megan (2009). People of the Long Barrows: Life, Death and Burial in the Early Neolithic. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 978-0752447339.

Wright (1844). "Proceedings of the Committee". The Archaeological Journal 1: 262–264.

• S.P. Menefee, "The Countless Stones: A Final Reckoning," Folklore, vol. 86 (Autumn/Winter, 1975): pp. 146-66.

Coordinates: 51°18′57″N 0°30′05″E / 51.31596°N 0.50141°E